Yaoi
Encyclopedia
In careful Japanese enunciation, all three vowels are pronounced separately, for a three-mora
word, ja.o.i. The English equivalent is . also known as Boys' Love, is a Japanese
popular term
for female-oriented fictional media that focus on homoerotic
or homoromantic
male relationships, usually created by female authors. As these depict males, there is an androphilic male audience as well, however manga aimed at a gay male audience
is considered a separate genre. Originally referring to a specific type of dōjinshi
(self-published works) parody of mainstream anime and manga works, yaoi came to be used as a generic term for female-oriented manga
, anime
, dating sims, novels and dōjinshi featuring idealized homosexual male relationships. The main characters in yaoi usually conform to the formula of the who pursues the .
In Japan, the term has largely been replaced by the rubric , which subsumes both parodies and original works, and commercial as well as dōjinshi works. Although the genre is called Boys' Love (commonly abbreviated as "BL"), the males featured are pubescent or older. Works featuring prepubescent boys are labeled shotacon
, and seen as a distinct genre. Yaoi (as it continues to be known among English-speaking fans) has spread beyond Japan: both translated and original yaoi is now available in many countries and languages.
Yaoi began in the dōjinshi markets of Japan in the late 1970s/early 1980s as an outgrowth of (also known as "Juné" or "tanbi"), but whereas shōnen-ai (both commercial and dōjinshi) were original works, yaoi were parodies
of popular shōnen anime and manga, such as Captain Tsubasa
and Saint Seiya
.
BL creators and fans are careful to distinguish the genre from bara
, including "gay manga", which are created by and for gay men. However, some male manga creators have produced BL works. Yuri is a wider blanket term than yaoi, because it refers to comics with lesbian relationships, regardless of the target audience, which may be (presumptively heterosexual) men, heterosexual women, or lesbian women. Yuri made by and for lesbians tends to resemble a distaff counterpart of bara, while men's yuri manga is more like yaoi manga, since both are targeted at the opposite sex and are not about realistic homosexual relationships.
Yaoi is an acronym created in the dōjinshi market of the late 1970s by Yasuko Sakata
and Akiko Hatsu
and popularized in the 1980s standing for . This phrase was first used as a "euphemism for the content" and refers to how yaoi, as opposed to the "difficult to understand" shōnen-ai of the Year 24 Group
, focused on "the yummy parts". The phrase also parodies a classical style of plot structure
. Kubota Mitsuyoshi says that Osamu Tezuka
used yama nashi, ochi nashi, imi nashi to dismiss poor quality manga, and this was appropriated by the early yaoi authors. As of 1998, the term yaoi was considered "common knowledge to manga fans". A joking alternative acronym among fujoshi
(female yaoi fans) for yaoi is .
Originally in Japan, much BL material was called , a name derived from June
, a magazine that published male/male romances, Kaoru Kurimoto
had also written shōnen ai mono stories in the late 1970s that have been described as "the precursors of yaoi". The term "bishōnen
manga" was used in the 1970s, but became depreciated in the 1990s when the manga featured a broader range of protagonists than adolescent boys. June magazine was named after the French author Jean Genet
, with "june" being a play on the Japanese pronunciation of his name. Eventually the term "june" died out in favour of "BL," which remains the most common name. Mizoguchi suggests that publishers wishing to get a foothold in the June market coined the term BL to disassociate the genre with the publisher of June.
Another term for yaoi is 801. "801" can be read as "yaoi" in the following form: the "short" reading of the number 8 is "ya", 0 can be read as "o" – a western influence, while the short reading for 1 is "i" (see Japanese wordplay). For example, an Internet manga called Tonari no 801-chan
, about a male otaku
who dates a fujoshi
, has been adapted into a serialized shōjo manga and a live-action film
. 801-chan, the mascot of a Japanese shopping centre, is used in the manga.
Yaoi has become an umbrella term
in the West for women's manga
or Japanese-influenced comics with male-male relationships, and it is the term preferentially used by American manga publishers. The actual name of the genre aimed toward women in Japan is called 'BL' or 'Boy's Love'. BL is aimed at the shōjo and josei
demographics, but is considered a separate category. Yaoi is used in Japan to include dōjinshi and sex scenes, and does not include gei comi
, which is by and for gay men.
The terms yaoi and shōnen-ai are sometimes used by western fans to differentiate between the contents of the genre. In this case, yaoi is used to describe titles that contain largely sex scenes and other sexually explicit themes and shōnen-ai is used to describe titles that focus more on romance and do not include explicit sexual content, although they may include implicit sexual content. When using the terms in this way, Gravitation
is considered to be shōnen-ai due to its focus on the characters' careers rather than their love life, while the Gravitation Remix and Megamix dōjinshi
by the same author, which emphasize the characters' sexual relationships, would be considered yaoi. Sometimes the word hentai
is used as an additional modifier with yaoi – "hentai yaoi" – to denote the most explicit titles. However, Kaze to Ki no Uta
was groundbreaking in its depictions of "openly sexual relationships", spurring the development of the Boys Love genre in shōjo manga, and the development of sexually explicit amateur comics. The use of yaoi to denote those works with explicit scenes sometimes clashes with use of the word to describe the genre as a whole. Yaoi can be used by fans as a label for anime or manga-based slash fiction
.
While shōnen-ai literally means boy's love, the two terms are not synonymous. In Japan, shōnen-ai used to refer to a now obsolete subgenre of shōjo manga about prepubescent boys in relationships ranging from the platonic
to the romantic and sexual. The term was originally used to describe ephebophilia
, and in scholarly contexts still is. Boy's Love, on the other hand, is used as a genre's name and refers to all titles regardless of sexual content or the ages of characters in the story (with the exception of titles featuring prepubescent boys, which are categorized as shotacon
, a distinct genre with only peripheral connections to BL).
) and serialized in gay men's magazines. It is an even smaller niche genre
in Japan than yaoi manga; none has been licensed in English and not much has been scanlated
into English. Considered a subgenre of (men's erotica) for gay males, bara resembles comics for men (seinen
) rather than comics for female readers (shōjo/josei
).
Recently a subgenre of BL has been introduced in Japan, so-called or "muscley-chubby" BL,
which offers more masculine body types and is more likely to have gay male authors and artists. Although still marketed primarily to women, it is also thought to attract a large crossover gay male audience.
This material has been referred to as "bara" among English-speaking fans, but it is distinct in publishing terms (and often in content and style), and should not be confused with gei comi proper.
The yaoi OVA Legend of the Blue Wolves is considered the first OVA for bara fans.
to mean the receptive partner in anal sex. Aleardo Zanghellini suggests that the martial arts terms have special significance to a Japanese audience, as an "archetype" of male same-sex relationships are those between samurai and their companions. Seme
derives from the ichidan verb and uke from the verb . Seme and uke are analogous
to "top" and "bottom." The seme and uke are often drawn in the bishōnen
style and are "highly idealised", blending both masculine
and feminine
qualities.
Zanghellini suggests that the samurai archetype is responsible for "the 'hierarchical' structure and age difference" of some relationships portrayed in yaoi and BL. The seme is often depicted as the stereotypical
male of anime and manga culture: restrained, physically powerful, and/or protective. The seme is generally older and taller, with a stronger chin, shorter hair, smaller eyes, and a more stereotypically masculine, even "macho", demeanour than the uke. The seme usually pursues the uke, hence the name. The uke usually has softer, androgynous, feminine features with bigger eyes and a smaller build, and is often physically weaker than the seme. Zanghellini feels that these stereotypes come from shōjo manga conventions of depicting heroines and her female rival, where the heroine would be portrayed as kawaii and her rival would be portrayed as a sophisticated and adult beauty. When the characters were changed from female to male, these characteristics remained in the seme and uke characters. In this view, readers identify with the uke. Readers may identify with the seme, or the uke, or both at the same time, or instead become a voyeur.
Anal sex
is a prevalent theme in yaoi, as nearly all stories feature it in some way. The storyline where an uke is reluctant to have anal sex with a seme is considered to be similar to the reader's reluctance to have sexual contact with someone for the first time. Zanghellini notes that anal sex is almost always in a position so that the characters face each other, not in the doggy style
Zanghelli states is portrayed by gay pornography
. Zanghellini also notes that the uke rarely fellates
the seme, but instead receives the sexual and romantic attentions of the seme.
One stereotype that is criticized is when the protagonists do not identify as gay, but rather are simply in love with that particular person. This is said to heighten the theme of all-conquering love, but is also pointed to as avoiding having to address prejudices against people who consider themselves to have been born homosexual
. In recent years, newer yaoi stories have characters that identify as gay. Criticism of the stereotypically "girly" behavior of the uke has also been prominent. It has been questioned if yaoi is heteronormative, due to the masculine seme and feminine uke stereotypes. Additionally, yaoi stories are often told from the ukes perspective. When the seme and uke roles are more closely adhered to, the uke character may be said to represent a "'vagina/anus' to be penetrated", but even as he is penetrated, his phallus is not forgotten, for example, as a seme simultaneously fellates and digitally penetrates his partner in Play Boy Blues
. This combination of penetration and phallic pleasure reinforces depictions of sex in yaoi as challenging the idea that there is an active, penetrating, male sexuality as opposed to a passive, penetrated, female sexuality.
Though these stereotypes are common, not all works adhere to them. Mark McLelland says that authors are "interested in exploring, not repudiating" the dynamics between the insertive partner and the receptive partner. The possibility of switching roles is often a source of playful teasing and sexual excitement for the characters, which has been said to show that the genre is aware of the "performative nature" of the roles. Sometimes the bottom character will be the aggressor in the relationship, or the pair will switch their sexual roles. Riba, リバ (a contraction of the English word "reversible") is used to describe a couple that yaoi fans think is still plausible when the partners switch their seme/uke roles. In another common mode of characters, the author will forego the stylisations of the seme and uke, and will portray both lovers as "equally attractive handsome men". In this case, whichever of the two who is ordinarily in charge will take the "passive role" in the bedroom.
or pederasty
in Japan, but from the early 1970s to the late 1980s, was used to describe a new genre of shōjo manga, primarily by the Year 24 Group
, about beautiful boys in love. Characteristics of shōnen-ai include that they were exotic, often taking place in Europe, and idealistic. Suzuki describes shōnen-ai as being "pedantic" and "difficult to understand", saying that they required "knowledge of classic literature, history and science" and were replete with "philosophical and abstract musings". She says that this challenged the young readers and expanded their minds. Although they could not understand the works at first reading, as they grew older they would come to understand the works more. In the meantime, "the readers' attention became focused on the figure of the male protagonist" and how he navigated his sexual relationships. By the late 1980s, the popularity of professionally published shōnen-ai was declining, and yaoi dōjinshi was becoming more popular. In recent years, the terms yaoi and shōnen-ai have sometimes been used by western fans to differentiate between the contents of the genre. Yaoi has been used to describe titles that contain largely sex scenes and other sexually explicit themes and shōnen-ai is used to describe titles that focus more on romance and do not include explicit sexual content, although they may include implicit sexual content.
subculture has been considered the Japanese equivalent of the English-language slash fandom, especially as they both do not have typical "narrative structure", science fiction
works are particularly popular in both, and they both originated in the 1970s.
Typical yaoi dōjinshi
features male-male pairings from non-romantic, published manga
and anime
. Much of the material derives from male-oriented (shōnen and seinen
) works which contained male-male close friendships and are perceived by fans to imply homosexual attraction
, such as with Captain Tsubasa
and Saint Seiya
, two titles which popularised yaoi in the 1980s. Saint Seiya
was particularly popular as it had a large cast of characters, most of them male, which allowed "an incredible number" of pairings between characters, although Andromeda Shun
was one of the more popular characters to parody in yaoi, as he was presented in the original series as "fragile and sensible, with fine traits, long hair, doe eyes and the most feminine armour of the group". For a time, yaoi dōjinshi was known as “Captain Tsubasa”. Dōjinshi has been described by Comiket
's co-founder Yoshihiro Yonezawa
as being "girls playing with dolls"; yaoi fans may ship
any male-male pairing, sometimes pairing off a favourite character, or creating a story about two men and fitting existing characters into the story.
Matt Thorn notes that unlike in slash fandom, a canonical
homoerotic element "takes away the fun" of creating yaoi for that series, for example, From Eroica with Love
is more popular with slash fans than it has been with dōjinshi artists. Kazuko Suzuki outlines the thematic development of the yaoi fandom, from curiosity about sexuality, to taking a parodic revenge against men, to a feminist protest, and lastly, exploring "ideal relationships".
Important characteristics of the early yaoi dōjinshi were that they were amateur publications not controlled by media restrictions, the stories were by teens for other teens and they were based on famous characters who were in their teens or early twenties, the same age as the yaoi fans. The rapid expansion of Comiket
during the 1980s (less than 10,000 attendees in 1982-over 100,000 attendees in 1989) permitted many doujinshi authors to sell thousands of copies of their works, earning a fair amount of money. Mizoguchi points out that June paid a small honorarium
and only published stories which suited their less-explicit style, leading to some authors of yaoi choosing not to try to publish in June. During the early 1990s, dōjinshi played a part in popularising yaoi. Yaoi dōjinshi has been compared to the Plot, what Plot? subgenre of fan fiction
.
Though collectors often focus on dōjinshi based on particular manga, any male character may become the subject of a yaoi dōjinshi, even characters from non-manga titles such as Harry Potter
or The Lord of the Rings
, or video games such as Kingdom Hearts
and Final Fantasy
, real people such as politicians, or personifications
such as Hetalia: Axis Powers
, or complementary items such as salt and pepper
or peanut butter and jelly. Patrick W. Galbraith sums this up by saying "Among fujoshi, there seems no limit to the potential of transgressive intimacy imagined in yaoi relationships in pursuit of moe."
Most dōjinshi are created by amateurs who often work in "circles"; for example, the group CLAMP
began as an amateur dōjinshi circle, drawing Saint Seiya yaoi. However, some professional artists, such as Kodaka Kazuma create dōjinshi as well. Some publishing companies have used dōjinshi published in the 1980s to spot talented amateurs, such as Biblos hiring Youka Nitta
.
Convention when labelling stories differs between Japanese fandom and slash-influenced fandoms. In Japan, the labelling is to put the two names of the characters separated by a multiplication sign, with the seme being first, and the uke being second.
for female readers featuring beautiful male-male couples, referred to as "American yaoi." The first known original English-language BL comic is Sexual Espionage #1 by Daria McGrain, published in May 2002. Since approximately 2004, what started as a small subculture in North America has become a burgeoning market, as new publishers began producing female-oriented male/male erotic comics and manga from creators outside Japan. Because creators from all parts of the globe are published in these "original English language" works, the term "American Yaoi" fell out of use; terms like 'Original English Language yaoi' shortened to 'Global Yaoi'. The term Global BL was coined by creators and newsgroups that wanted to distinguish the Asian specific content known as 'yaoi', from the original English content, and so the term Global BL was used. "Global BL" was shortened by comics author Tina Anderson in interviews and on her blog to the acronym 'GloBL'.
Current North American publishers of 'Global BL' are Yaoi Press
, and publisher DramaQueen
, which debuted its 'Global BL' quarterly anthology RUSH in 2006. RUSH ceased publishing when the company experienced financial issues and were uncommunicative with the creators involved in the project. Dramaqueen began publishing again in 2010, and on their forums, CEO Tran Nguyen indicated RUSH would return in a new format in 2011.
Former publishers include Iris Print.
Prolific GloBL creators include Yayoi Neko, Dany & Dany, Tina Anderson
, and Studio Kosen.
The most recent publishing boom in GloBL is happening in Germany, with a handful of original German titles gaining popularity for being set in Asia. Some publishers of German GloBL are traditional manga publishers like Carlsen Manga, and small press publishers specialising in GloBL like The Wild Side and Fireangels Verlag.
The earliest magazine about Boy's Love was June
, which began in 1978 as a response to the success of commercially published manga such as the works of Keiko Takemiya
, Moto Hagio
and Yumiko Ōshima
. Other factors was the rising popularity of depictions of bishōnen in the dōjinshi market and ambiguous musicians such as David Bowie
and Queen
. June was meant to have an underground, "cultish, guerilla-style" feeling – most of its manga artists
were new talent. Frederik L. Schodt describes June as "a kind of 'readers' magazine, created by and for the readers." Essays about the characteristics of the June genre were published with the manga in June. In 1982, Shōsetsu June ("Novel June"), a sister magazine to June began publication. Its content is text-only stories with male romance. Nagaike believes that the true "revolution" in BL culture was when it began to be commercially published en masse in the 1990s. As of the mid-1990s, Shōsetsu June outsold June. As of 2008, June was still running, although the target audience's ages have widened and the style of stories has changed from being "soft love" to more overtly pornographic. The magazine (1980–1984) which was more text-based than June was influential in cultivating a lesbian culture
.
The Japanese publisher Biblos was a BL publisher established in 1988 but their bankruptcy due to failure of their parent company caused them to fold in April 2006. Most of their titles were picked up by Libre. A 2006 breakdown of the Japanese commercial BL market estimated it grosses approximately 12 billion yen annually, with novel sales generating 250 million yen per month, manga generating 400 million yen per month, CDs generating 180 million yen per month, and video games generating 160 million yen per month. A 2010 report estimated that the Boys Love market was worth approximately 21.3 billion yen in both 2009 and 2010.
Japanese BL works are sold to English-speaking countries by companies that translate and print them in English; companies such as Digital Manga Publishing
with their imprints 801 Media (for explicit BL) and June (for "romantic and sweet" BL), as well as DramaQueen
, Kitty Media, Central Park Media
's Be Beautiful, Tokyopop
under their imprint BLU, Broccoli
under their Boysenberry imprint, Aurora Publishing
under their imprint Deux Press, and Yaoi Generation. The first publisher of BL in translation may be ComicsOne
, which released two volumes of shōnen-ai manga as e-books in January 2000. In 2001, the only BL-type manga available in print in English were the barely-suggestive Banana Fish
and X/1999, and in 2002, commercially translated BL was "not common". According to McLelland, the earliest officially translated BL manga in print appeared in 2003, and as of 2006 there were about 130 English-translated works commercially available. In March 2007, Media Blasters
stopped selling shōnen manga and increased their yaoi lines, anticipating to publish one or two titles per month that year. In 2007 following Biblos' bankruptcy, Libre published an open letter on their website which said that English-language publishers had to renegotiate publishing rights for Biblos' former series with Libre, specifically naming CPM's releases as "illegal". Diamond Comic Distributors
estimated the U.S. sales of yaoi manga as being approximately $US 6 million in 2007. In English-speaking countries explicit stories are either sold online or displayed in shrink wrap
. Mark McLelland surveyed 135 yaoi books published in North America between 2003 and 2006, and found that 14% was rated at 13 years or over, 39% was rated for readers aged 15 years or over, and 47% was rated for readers 18 years or older. In 2008, BLU reported that although bookshops are becoming more willing to stock BL titles, they are conservative about how the books are labelled, leading to books being shrink wrapped and rated for over 18s which previously would have garnered an over 16 rating, and do not "really follow through on the [adult content] promise."
In 2010, Libre Publishing sent cease and desist letters to English language BL scanlation
groups.
Tokyopop and its imprint BLU folded in May 2011. In October 2011, Viz Media
launched the BL imprint SuBLime in collaboration with the Japanese BL publisher Libre
and the Japanese retailer Animate
to publish English-language BL for the print and worldwide digital market.
mono about young adolescents, riiman mono, about salarymen, and gakuen mono, stories set on a campus. Common characters in yaoi are schoolboys and yakuza
. Sometimes, schoolboys are depicted in sexual situations, which is controversial when these titles are licensed in countries where underage sexuality and its depiction is taboo.
, who killed her husband in front of her young son. Suzuki suggests this is because the character and the reader are attempting to replace a mother's lacking "unconditional love" with the "forbidden" all-consuming love presented in yaoi. Nariko Enomoto
, a yaoi author, says she feels that when women are shown, "it can't help but become weirdly real". When yaoi fan works are created from a series which originally contained females (such as Gundam Wing), the female's role is either minimised or the character is killed off. Early shōnen-ai and yaoi has been regarded as misogynistic, but Lunsing detects a decrease in misogynistic comments from characters and regards the development of the yuri genre as reflecting a reduction of internal misogyny. Alternatively, the yaoi fandom is also viewed as a "refuge" from mainstream culture, which in this paradigm is viewed as inherently misogynistic. Fumi Yoshinaga
is regarded as a creator who usually includes at least one sympathetic female character in her works. Also, there are many female characters in Yaoi who are Fujoshi
themselves.
which offers more masculine body types and is more likely to have gay male authors and artists. Although still marketed primarily to women, it is also thought to attract a large crossover gay male audience. Although this type of material has also been referred to as "bara" among English-speaking fans, it is not equivalent to gei comi proper (although there is considerable overlap, as writers, artists and art styles cross over between the two genres). Prior to the development of gachi muchi, the greatest overlap between yaoi and bara authors has been in BDSM
-themed publications such as Zettai Reido, a yaoi anthology magazine which had a number of openly male contributors. Several female yaoi authors who have done BDSM-themed yaoi have been recruited to contribute stories to BDSM-themed bara anthologies or special issues.
, historic or futuristic settings, and many fans consider BL to be an "escapist fantasy". Homophobia
, when it is presented as an issue at all, is used as a plot device
to "heighten the drama", or to show the purity of the leads’ love. Matt Thorn has suggested that as BL is a romance narrative, having strong political themes may be a "turn off" to the readers. Yaoi narratives show characters "overcoming obstacles, often internal, to be together". The theme of the victory of the protagonists in yaoi has been compared favourably to Western fairy tale
s, as the latter intends to enforce the status quo
, but yaoi is "about desire" and seeks "to explore, not circumscribe, possibilities." Hisako Miyoshi, vice editor-in-chief for Libre Publishing
, has said that she feels that boys love manga has become less realist, with more comedic elements or being "simply for entertainment". She thinks that earlier BL focused "more on the homosexual way of life with a realist perspective." Makoto Tateno
has said that she feels that BL with a focus on realistic gay issues "won't become a trend, because girls like fiction more than realism." Akiko Mizoguchi feels that while depictions of homosexuality as "shameful" to heighten dramatic tension are still shown, BL is including more coming out
stories which portray a gradual acceptance from the wider community. Mizoguchi feels that BL is showing far more gay-friendly depictions of Japanese society, which she regards as activism.
, which gives the men freedom to bond with each other and to pursue shared goals together, as in dojinshi
representations of Captain Tsubasa, or to rival each other, as in Haru wo Daiteita
. This spiritual bond and equal partnership shown overcomes the male-female power hierarchy.
in yaoi is a way of expressing commitment to a partner, and "apparent violence" in sex is a "measure of passion". Suzuki elaborates that when a woman is raped, she is stigmatised by society, but in yaoi narratives, boys who are loved by their rapists are still "imbued with innocence", a theme she attributes to Kaze to Ki no Uta
. According to Nagaike, rape scenes in yaoi are rarely presented as crime
s with an assaulter and a victim. Nagaike feels that scenes where a seme rapes an uke are not symptomatic of the seme's "disruptive sexual/violent desires", but instead are a signifier of the "uncontrollable love" felt by a seme for an uke. Instead of being depicted as a crime, rape scenes can be a plot device
used to make the uke see the seme as more than just a good friend, resulting in the uke falling in love with the seme. Rape fantasy
themes have been said to free the protagonist of responsibility in sex, leading to the narrative climax
of the story, where "the protagonist takes responsibility for his own sexuality". The 2003-2005 Under Grand Hotel
, set in a men's prison, has been praised for showing a more realistic depiction of rape.
s. When tragic endings are shown, the cause is not infidelity, but "the cruel and intrusive demands of an uncompromising outside world."
observed that “aesthetically” depicted male-male homosexual relationships had become popular among female readers as an extension of bisexual themes already present in shōjo manga. Japanese critics have seen BL as allowing girls to distance sex from their own bodies, as allowing girls to avoid adult female sexuality
while simultaneously creating greater fluidity in perceptions of gender and sexuality, and as rejecting “socially mandated” gender role
s as a “first step toward feminism
.” In more elaborate theorizing, Kazuko Suzuki sees BL manga emerging from girls' contempt and dislike for masculine heterosexism
and from an effort to define "ideal relationships" among men. Mizoguchi, writing in 2003, feels that BL is a "female-gendered space", as the writers, readers, artists and most of the editors of BL are female. BL has been compared to romance novels by English-speaking librarians. Parallels have also been noted in the popularity of lesbianism in pornography, and yaoi has been called a form of "female fetishism
". Mariko Ōhara
, a science fiction writer, has said that she wrote yaoi Kirk/Spock
fiction as a teen because she could not enjoy "conventional pornography, which had been made for men", and that she had found a "limitless freedom" in yaoi, much like in science fiction
.
Other commentators have suggested that more radical gender-political issues underlie BL. Shihomi Sakakibara (1998) argued that yaoi fans, including herself, were homosexually oriented female-to-male transsexuals. For Sandra Buckley, bishōnen narratives champion “the imagined potentialities of alternative [gender] differentiations" and James Welker described the bishōnen character as "queer
", observing that manga critic Akiko Mizoguchi saw shōnen-ai as playing a role in how she herself had become a lesbian. Dru Pagliassotti sees this and the yaoi ronsō as indicating that for Japanese gay and lesbian readers, BL is not as far removed from reality as heterosexual female readers like to claim. Welker added that shōnen-ai liberates readers "not just from patriarchy, but from gender dualism
and heteronormativity."
Some gay and lesbian commentators have criticized how gay identity is portrayed in BL, most notably in the yaoi ronsō or "yaoi debate" of 1992–1997. In May 1992, gay activist Masaki Satō criticized yaoi fans and artists in an open letter
to the feminist zine
(or minikomi in Japanese) Choisir. Satō said that yaoi failed to provide accurate information about gay men, promoted a destructive image of gay men as wealthy, handsome, and well-educated, ignored prejudice and discrimination against gay men in society, and co-opted gay men as masturbation fantasies. An extensive debate ensued, with yaoi fans and artists arguing that yaoi is entertainment for women, not education for gay men, and that yaoi characters are not meant to represent "real gay men." As internet resources for gay men developed in the 1990s, the yaoi debate waned but has had later echoes, for example when Mizoguchi in 2003 characterised stereotypes in modern BL as being "unrealistic and homophobic". There has been similar criticism to the Japanese yaoi debate in the English-speaking fandom. In 1993 and 2004, Matt Thorn
pointed to the complexity of these phenomena, and suggested that yaoi and slash fiction
fans are discontented with “the standards of femininity to which they are expected to adhere and a social environment
that does not validate or sympathize with that discontent.”
As women have greater economic power, commercial demand for the sexualization of men may correlate. Korean manhwa
writer Jin Seok Jeon wrote in a commentary to Vol. 5, Chp 2 of an Arabian Nights themed shōnen-ai work, A Night of a Thousand Dreams, "Men are now marketable. It's also a time where women are big consumers and can buy almost anything they desire. Some men think this is degrading...but the tables have turned, and I like the fact that men are just as commercialized now." He jokes that after researching oil wrestling
, which requires extreme physical fitness, he does not feel as marketable, illustrating that yaoi and other pornography exploiting men is subject to traditional criticisms, such as sexual objectification
, creating unrealistic expectations and negative body image
s.
In China, BL became very popular in the late 1990s, attracting media attention, which became negative, focusing on the challenge it posed to "heterosexual hegemony". Publishing and distributing BL is illegal in mainland China. Zanghellini notes that due to the "characteristics of the yaoi/BL genre" of showing characters who are often underage engaging in romantic and sexual situations, child pornography laws in Australia
and Canada
"may lend themselves to targeting yaoi/BL work". He notes that in the UK
, cartoons are exempt from child pornography laws unless they are used for child grooming
.
In 2001, a controversy erupted in Thailand
regarding homosexual male comics. Television reports labeled the comics as negative influences, while a newspaper falsely stated that most of the comics were not copyrighted as the publishers feared arrest for posting the content; in reality most of the titles were likely illegally published without permission from the original Japanese publishers. The shōnen ai comics provided profits for the comic shops, which sold between 30 to 50 such comics per day. The moral panic regarding the male homosexual comics subsided. The Thai girls felt too embarrassed to read heterosexual stories, so they read homosexual male-themed josei and shōjo stories, which they saw as "unthreatening."
Youka Nitta has said that "even in Japan, reading boys' love isn't something that parents encourage" and encouraged any parents who had concerns about her works to read them. Although in Japan, concern about manga has been mostly directed to shōnen manga, in 2006, an email campaign was launched against the availability of BL manga in Sakai City's public library. In August 2008, the library decided to stop buying more BL, and to keep its existing BL in a collection restricted to adult readers. That November, the library was contacted by people who protested against the removal, regarding it as "a form of sexual discrimination". The Japanese media ran stories on how much BL was in public libraries, and emphasised that this sexual material had been loaned out to minors. Debate ensued on Mixi
, a Japanese social networking site, and eventually the library returned its BL to the public collection. Mark McLelland suggests that BL may become "a major battlefront for proponents and detractors of 'gender free
' policies in employment, education and elsewhere."
Mora (linguistics)
Mora is a unit in phonology that determines syllable weight, which in some languages determines stress or timing. As with many technical linguistic terms, the definition of a mora varies. Perhaps the most succinct working definition was provided by the American linguist James D...
word, ja.o.i. The English equivalent is . also known as Boys' Love, is a Japanese
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
popular term
Japanese popular culture
Japanese popular culture not only reflects the attitudes and concerns of the present but also provides a link to the past. Japanese cinema, cuisine, television programs, manga, and music all developed from older artistic and literary traditions, and many of their themes and styles of presentation...
for female-oriented fictional media that focus on homoerotic
Homoeroticism
Homoeroticism refers to the erotic attraction between members of the same sex, either male–male or female–female , most especially as it is depicted or manifested in the visual arts and literature. It can also be found in performative forms; from theatre to the theatricality of uniformed movements...
or homoromantic
Affectional orientation
Affectional orientation is used both alternatively and side-by-side with sexual orientation. It is based on the perspective that sexual attraction is but a single component of a larger dynamic. To holders of this view, one's orientation is defined by whom one is predisposed to fall in love with,...
male relationships, usually created by female authors. As these depict males, there is an androphilic male audience as well, however manga aimed at a gay male audience
Bara (genre)
, also known as the wasei-eigo construction or ML, is a Japanese jargon term for a genre of art and fictional media that focuses on male same-sex love and desire, usually created by and for gay men. The bara genre began in the 1960s with fetish magazines featuring gay art and content...
is considered a separate genre. Originally referring to a specific type of dōjinshi
Dojinshi
is the Japanese term for self-published works, usually magazines, manga or novels. Dōjinshi are often the work of amateurs, though some professional artists participate as a way to publish material outside the regular industry. The term dōjinshi is derived from and . Dōjinshi are part of a wider...
(self-published works) parody of mainstream anime and manga works, yaoi came to be used as a generic term for female-oriented manga
Manga
Manga is the Japanese word for "comics" and consists of comics and print cartoons . In the West, the term "manga" has been appropriated to refer specifically to comics created in Japan, or by Japanese authors, in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 19th...
, anime
Anime
is the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....
, dating sims, novels and dōjinshi featuring idealized homosexual male relationships. The main characters in yaoi usually conform to the formula of the who pursues the .
In Japan, the term has largely been replaced by the rubric , which subsumes both parodies and original works, and commercial as well as dōjinshi works. Although the genre is called Boys' Love (commonly abbreviated as "BL"), the males featured are pubescent or older. Works featuring prepubescent boys are labeled shotacon
Shotacon
, sometimes shortened to , is a Japanese slang portmanteau of the phrase and describes an attraction to young boys, or an individual with such an attraction. Outside Japan, the term is used less often with this meaning. It refers to a genre of manga and anime wherein pre-pubescent or pubescent...
, and seen as a distinct genre. Yaoi (as it continues to be known among English-speaking fans) has spread beyond Japan: both translated and original yaoi is now available in many countries and languages.
Yaoi began in the dōjinshi markets of Japan in the late 1970s/early 1980s as an outgrowth of (also known as "Juné" or "tanbi"), but whereas shōnen-ai (both commercial and dōjinshi) were original works, yaoi were parodies
Parody
A parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...
of popular shōnen anime and manga, such as Captain Tsubasa
Captain Tsubasa
, also known as Flash Kicker, is a popular long running Japanese manga, animation, and video game series, originally created by Yōichi Takahashi in 1981...
and Saint Seiya
Saint Seiya
, also known as Saint Seiya: Knights of the Zodiac or simply Knights of the Zodiac, is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Masami Kurumada and serialized in Weekly Shōnen Jump from 1986 to 1991, and adapted into an anime TV series by Toei Animation from 1986 to 1989.The story follows...
.
BL creators and fans are careful to distinguish the genre from bara
Bara (genre)
, also known as the wasei-eigo construction or ML, is a Japanese jargon term for a genre of art and fictional media that focuses on male same-sex love and desire, usually created by and for gay men. The bara genre began in the 1960s with fetish magazines featuring gay art and content...
, including "gay manga", which are created by and for gay men. However, some male manga creators have produced BL works. Yuri is a wider blanket term than yaoi, because it refers to comics with lesbian relationships, regardless of the target audience, which may be (presumptively heterosexual) men, heterosexual women, or lesbian women. Yuri made by and for lesbians tends to resemble a distaff counterpart of bara, while men's yuri manga is more like yaoi manga, since both are targeted at the opposite sex and are not about realistic homosexual relationships.
Usage
Although different meanings are often ascribed to the terms yaoi and Boy's Love (with yaoi generally said to be more explicit and BL generally said to being less so), there is conflicting information on their usage.Yaoi is an acronym created in the dōjinshi market of the late 1970s by Yasuko Sakata
Yasuko Sakata
Yasuko Sakata 坂田 靖子 is a manga artist who belongs to the Post Year 24 Group. She was born on the 25th of February, 1953 in Osaka, Japan. Her official debut was with the work Saikon Kyousou Kyoku 再婚狂騒曲, published in Hana to Yume in 1975. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, she was involved in the...
and Akiko Hatsu
Akiko Hatsu
is a Japanese manga artist born on December 16, 1959, in Kanazawa, Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan. From the time she was in high school, she assisted her older sister, professional manga artist Yukiko Kai. After graduating high school, she began working for a printing company in Kanazawa City, but she...
and popularized in the 1980s standing for . This phrase was first used as a "euphemism for the content" and refers to how yaoi, as opposed to the "difficult to understand" shōnen-ai of the Year 24 Group
Year 24 group
refers to one of two female manga artist groups which are considered to have revolutionized shōjo manga . Their works often examine "radical and philosophical issues", including sexuality and gender issues, and many of their works are now considered "classics" of shōjo manga...
, focused on "the yummy parts". The phrase also parodies a classical style of plot structure
Kishotenketsu
describes the structure and development of Chinese and Japanese narratives. It was originally used in Chinese poetry as a four-line composition, such as Qijue, and is also referred to as . The first Chinese character refers to the introduction or , the next: development, , the third: twist, ,...
. Kubota Mitsuyoshi says that Osamu Tezuka
Osamu Tezuka
was a Japanese cartoonist, manga artist, animator, producer, activist and medical doctor, although he never practiced medicine. Born in Osaka Prefecture, he is best known as the creator of Astro Boy, Kimba the White Lion and Black Jack...
used yama nashi, ochi nashi, imi nashi to dismiss poor quality manga, and this was appropriated by the early yaoi authors. As of 1998, the term yaoi was considered "common knowledge to manga fans". A joking alternative acronym among fujoshi
Fujoshi
Yaoi fandom refers to readers of yaoi , a genre of male-male romance narratives aimed at a female audience, and more specifically those who participate in communal activities organized around yaoi, such as attending conventions, maintaining or posting to fansites, creating fanfiction or fanart,...
(female yaoi fans) for yaoi is .
Originally in Japan, much BL material was called , a name derived from June
June (manga magazine)
was the earliest yaoi magazine, which began in 1978 as a response to the success of commercially published manga such as the works of female artists Keiko Takemiya, Moto Hagio and Yumiko Ōshima. Other factors that influenced the founding of June were the rising popularity of depictions of...
, a magazine that published male/male romances, Kaoru Kurimoto
Kaoru Kurimoto
was the pen name of , an award-winning Japanese novelist. Imaoka also used the pen name to write criticism. She was known for her record-breaking 126-volume Guin Saga series, which has been translated into English, German, French, Italian and Russian...
had also written shōnen ai mono stories in the late 1970s that have been described as "the precursors of yaoi". The term "bishōnen
Bishonen
is a Japanese term literally meaning "beautiful youth ". The equivalent English concept is a "pretty boy".The term describes an aesthetic that can be found in disparate areas in East Asia: a young man whose beauty transcends the boundary of gender or sexual orientation...
manga" was used in the 1970s, but became depreciated in the 1990s when the manga featured a broader range of protagonists than adolescent boys. June magazine was named after the French author Jean Genet
Jean Genet
Jean Genet was a prominent and controversial French novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist. Early in his life he was a vagabond and petty criminal, but later took to writing...
, with "june" being a play on the Japanese pronunciation of his name. Eventually the term "june" died out in favour of "BL," which remains the most common name. Mizoguchi suggests that publishers wishing to get a foothold in the June market coined the term BL to disassociate the genre with the publisher of June.
Another term for yaoi is 801. "801" can be read as "yaoi" in the following form: the "short" reading of the number 8 is "ya", 0 can be read as "o" – a western influence, while the short reading for 1 is "i" (see Japanese wordplay). For example, an Internet manga called Tonari no 801-chan
Tonari no 801-chan
is a Japanese four-panel Internet manga written and illustrated by Ajiko Kojima. The story centers on the relationship between a male otaku named Tibet and his yaoi-obsessed fujoshi girlfriend Yaoi whose obsession manifests itself as a small, green furry monster...
, about a male otaku
Otaku
is a Japanese term used to refer to people with obsessive interests, particularly anime, manga or video games.- Etymology :Otaku is derived from a Japanese term for another's house or family , which is also used as an honorific second-person pronoun...
who dates a fujoshi
Fujoshi
Yaoi fandom refers to readers of yaoi , a genre of male-male romance narratives aimed at a female audience, and more specifically those who participate in communal activities organized around yaoi, such as attending conventions, maintaining or posting to fansites, creating fanfiction or fanart,...
, has been adapted into a serialized shōjo manga and a live-action film
Live action
In filmmaking, video production, and other media, the term live action refers to cinematography, videography not produced using animation...
. 801-chan, the mascot of a Japanese shopping centre, is used in the manga.
Yaoi has become an umbrella term
Umbrella term
An umbrella term is a word that provides a superset or grouping of concepts that all fall under a single common category. Umbrella term is also called a hypernym. For example, cryptology is an umbrella term that encompasses cryptography and cryptanalysis, among other fields...
in the West for women's manga
Manga
Manga is the Japanese word for "comics" and consists of comics and print cartoons . In the West, the term "manga" has been appropriated to refer specifically to comics created in Japan, or by Japanese authors, in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 19th...
or Japanese-influenced comics with male-male relationships, and it is the term preferentially used by American manga publishers. The actual name of the genre aimed toward women in Japan is called 'BL' or 'Boy's Love'. BL is aimed at the shōjo and josei
Josei
also known as or , is a term that refers to the target demographic of manga created mostly by women for late teenage and adult female audiences. Readers range from 15-44. In Japanese, the word josei means simply "woman", "female", "feminine", "womanhood" and has no manga-related connotations at...
demographics, but is considered a separate category. Yaoi is used in Japan to include dōjinshi and sex scenes, and does not include gei comi
Bara (genre)
, also known as the wasei-eigo construction or ML, is a Japanese jargon term for a genre of art and fictional media that focuses on male same-sex love and desire, usually created by and for gay men. The bara genre began in the 1960s with fetish magazines featuring gay art and content...
, which is by and for gay men.
The terms yaoi and shōnen-ai are sometimes used by western fans to differentiate between the contents of the genre. In this case, yaoi is used to describe titles that contain largely sex scenes and other sexually explicit themes and shōnen-ai is used to describe titles that focus more on romance and do not include explicit sexual content, although they may include implicit sexual content. When using the terms in this way, Gravitation
Gravitation (manga)
is a shōnen-ai manga series written by Maki Murakami.The story follows the attempts of Shuichi Shindo and his band, Bad Luck, to become Japan's next musical sensation and his struggles to capture Yuki's heart...
is considered to be shōnen-ai due to its focus on the characters' careers rather than their love life, while the Gravitation Remix and Megamix dōjinshi
Dojinshi
is the Japanese term for self-published works, usually magazines, manga or novels. Dōjinshi are often the work of amateurs, though some professional artists participate as a way to publish material outside the regular industry. The term dōjinshi is derived from and . Dōjinshi are part of a wider...
by the same author, which emphasize the characters' sexual relationships, would be considered yaoi. Sometimes the word hentai
Hentai
is a Japanese word that, in the West, is used when referring to sexually explicit or pornographic comics and animation, particularly those of Japanese origin such as anime, manga, and computer games. The word hentai is a kanji compound of 変 and 態...
is used as an additional modifier with yaoi – "hentai yaoi" – to denote the most explicit titles. However, Kaze to Ki no Uta
Kaze to Ki no Uta
is a shōjo manga with yaoi themes by Keiko Takemiya. It was first published by Shougakukan from 1976 to 1984 in the magazine Shōjo Comic. In 1979, it was awarded the prestigious Shogakukan Manga Award for shōnen/shōjo manga. The series is widely regarded as a shōnen-ai manga classic, being one of...
was groundbreaking in its depictions of "openly sexual relationships", spurring the development of the Boys Love genre in shōjo manga, and the development of sexually explicit amateur comics. The use of yaoi to denote those works with explicit scenes sometimes clashes with use of the word to describe the genre as a whole. Yaoi can be used by fans as a label for anime or manga-based slash fiction
Slash fiction
Slash fiction is a genre of fan fiction that focuses on the depiction of romantic or sexual relationships between fictional characters of the same sex...
.
While shōnen-ai literally means boy's love, the two terms are not synonymous. In Japan, shōnen-ai used to refer to a now obsolete subgenre of shōjo manga about prepubescent boys in relationships ranging from the platonic
Platonic love
Platonic love is a chaste and strong type of love that is non-sexual.-Amor Platonicus:The term amor platonicus was coined as early as the 15th century by the Florentine scholar Marsilio Ficino. Platonic love in this original sense of the term is examined in Plato's dialogue the Symposium, which has...
to the romantic and sexual. The term was originally used to describe ephebophilia
Ephebophilia
Ephebophilia is the sexual preference of adults for mid-to-late adolescents, generally ages 15 to 19. The term was originally used in the late 19th to mid 20th century, and has been more recently revisited by Ray Blanchard. It is one of a number of sexual preferences across age groups subsumed...
, and in scholarly contexts still is. Boy's Love, on the other hand, is used as a genre's name and refers to all titles regardless of sexual content or the ages of characters in the story (with the exception of titles featuring prepubescent boys, which are categorized as shotacon
Shotacon
, sometimes shortened to , is a Japanese slang portmanteau of the phrase and describes an attraction to young boys, or an individual with such an attraction. Outside Japan, the term is used less often with this meaning. It refers to a genre of manga and anime wherein pre-pubescent or pubescent...
, a distinct genre with only peripheral connections to BL).
Gei comi/Bara
Although sometimes conflated with "yaoi" by Anglophone commentators, (also called , ML, in Japan and "bara" in English) caters to a gay male audience rather than a female one and tends to be made primarily by homosexual and bisexual male artists (such as Gengoroh TagameGengoroh Tagame
is a Japanese manga artist who specializes in gay BDSM erotic manga, many of which depict graphic violence. The men he depicts are hypermasculine, and tend to be on the bearish side....
) and serialized in gay men's magazines. It is an even smaller niche genre
Niche market
A niche market is the subset of the market on which a specific product is focusing; therefore the market niche defines the specific product features aimed at satisfying specific market needs, as well as the price range, production quality and the demographics that is intended to impact...
in Japan than yaoi manga; none has been licensed in English and not much has been scanlated
Scanlation
Scanlation is the scanning, translation and editing of a graphic novel from a foreign language into a different language. Scanlation is done as an amateur work and is nearly always done without express permission from the copyright holder. The word scanlation is a portmanteau of scan and translation...
into English. Considered a subgenre of (men's erotica) for gay males, bara resembles comics for men (seinen
Seinen
is a subset of manga that is generally targeted at a 20–30 year old male audience, but the audience can be older with some manga aimed at businessmen well into their 40s. In Japanese, the word Seinen means "young man" or "young men" and is not suggestive of sexual matters...
) rather than comics for female readers (shōjo/josei
Josei
also known as or , is a term that refers to the target demographic of manga created mostly by women for late teenage and adult female audiences. Readers range from 15-44. In Japanese, the word josei means simply "woman", "female", "feminine", "womanhood" and has no manga-related connotations at...
).
Recently a subgenre of BL has been introduced in Japan, so-called or "muscley-chubby" BL,
which offers more masculine body types and is more likely to have gay male authors and artists. Although still marketed primarily to women, it is also thought to attract a large crossover gay male audience.
This material has been referred to as "bara" among English-speaking fans, but it is distinct in publishing terms (and often in content and style), and should not be confused with gei comi proper.
The yaoi OVA Legend of the Blue Wolves is considered the first OVA for bara fans.
Seme and uke
The two participants in a yaoi relationship (sometimes also in yuri) are often referred to as and . These terms originated in martial arts and uke is used in Japanese gay slangJani
Jāņi is a Latvian festival held in the night from 23 June to 24 June to celebrate the summer solstice , the shortest night and longest day of the year. The day of Līgo and the day of Jāņi are public holidays, and people usually spend them in the countryside...
to mean the receptive partner in anal sex. Aleardo Zanghellini suggests that the martial arts terms have special significance to a Japanese audience, as an "archetype" of male same-sex relationships are those between samurai and their companions. Seme
Seme (martial arts)
is a Japanese martial arts term for a kind of psychological pressure. The seme is the one inflicting something on to the uke. It is also an attitude meant to disrupt the opponents sense of confidence and resolution, prior to an attack....
derives from the ichidan verb and uke from the verb . Seme and uke are analogous
Analogy
Analogy is a cognitive process of transferring information or meaning from a particular subject to another particular subject , and a linguistic expression corresponding to such a process...
to "top" and "bottom." The seme and uke are often drawn in the bishōnen
Bishonen
is a Japanese term literally meaning "beautiful youth ". The equivalent English concept is a "pretty boy".The term describes an aesthetic that can be found in disparate areas in East Asia: a young man whose beauty transcends the boundary of gender or sexual orientation...
style and are "highly idealised", blending both masculine
Masculinity
Masculinity is possessing qualities or characteristics considered typical of or appropriate to a man. The term can be used to describe any human, animal or object that has the quality of being masculine...
and feminine
Femininity
Femininity is a set of attributes, behaviors, and roles generally associated with girls and women. Though socially constructed, femininity is made up of both socially defined and biologically created factors...
qualities.
Zanghellini suggests that the samurai archetype is responsible for "the 'hierarchical' structure and age difference" of some relationships portrayed in yaoi and BL. The seme is often depicted as the stereotypical
Stereotype
A stereotype is a popular belief about specific social groups or types of individuals. The concepts of "stereotype" and "prejudice" are often confused with many other different meanings...
male of anime and manga culture: restrained, physically powerful, and/or protective. The seme is generally older and taller, with a stronger chin, shorter hair, smaller eyes, and a more stereotypically masculine, even "macho", demeanour than the uke. The seme usually pursues the uke, hence the name. The uke usually has softer, androgynous, feminine features with bigger eyes and a smaller build, and is often physically weaker than the seme. Zanghellini feels that these stereotypes come from shōjo manga conventions of depicting heroines and her female rival, where the heroine would be portrayed as kawaii and her rival would be portrayed as a sophisticated and adult beauty. When the characters were changed from female to male, these characteristics remained in the seme and uke characters. In this view, readers identify with the uke. Readers may identify with the seme, or the uke, or both at the same time, or instead become a voyeur.
Anal sex
Anal sex
Anal sex is the sex act in which the penis is inserted into the anus of a sexual partner. The term can also include other sexual acts involving the anus, including pegging, anilingus , fingering, and object insertion.Common misconception describes anal sex as practiced almost exclusively by gay men...
is a prevalent theme in yaoi, as nearly all stories feature it in some way. The storyline where an uke is reluctant to have anal sex with a seme is considered to be similar to the reader's reluctance to have sexual contact with someone for the first time. Zanghellini notes that anal sex is almost always in a position so that the characters face each other, not in the doggy style
Doggy style
Doggy style is a group of sex positions in which the receiving partner crouches on all fours with the legs slightly apart...
Zanghelli states is portrayed by gay pornography
Gay pornography
Gay pornography is the representation of sexual intercourse between men with the primary goal of sexual arousal in its audience. There is also a tradition, and continuing considerable output, of lesbian pornography....
. Zanghellini also notes that the uke rarely fellates
Fellatio
Fellatio is an act of oral stimulation of a male's penis by a sexual partner. It involves the stimulation of the penis by the use of the mouth, tongue, or throat. The person who performs fellatio can be referred to as the giving partner, and the other person is the receiving partner...
the seme, but instead receives the sexual and romantic attentions of the seme.
One stereotype that is criticized is when the protagonists do not identify as gay, but rather are simply in love with that particular person. This is said to heighten the theme of all-conquering love, but is also pointed to as avoiding having to address prejudices against people who consider themselves to have been born homosexual
Queer theory
Queer theory is a field of critical theory that emerged in the early 1990s out of the fields of LGBT studies and feminist studies. Queer theory includes both queer readings of texts and the theorisation of 'queerness' itself...
. In recent years, newer yaoi stories have characters that identify as gay. Criticism of the stereotypically "girly" behavior of the uke has also been prominent. It has been questioned if yaoi is heteronormative, due to the masculine seme and feminine uke stereotypes. Additionally, yaoi stories are often told from the ukes perspective. When the seme and uke roles are more closely adhered to, the uke character may be said to represent a "'vagina/anus' to be penetrated", but even as he is penetrated, his phallus is not forgotten, for example, as a seme simultaneously fellates and digitally penetrates his partner in Play Boy Blues
Play Boy Blues
Play Boy Blues is a manga by Shiuko Kano. It was licensed in English by Central Park Media, which published the first volume under its Be Beautiful imprint on August 2, 2006...
. This combination of penetration and phallic pleasure reinforces depictions of sex in yaoi as challenging the idea that there is an active, penetrating, male sexuality as opposed to a passive, penetrated, female sexuality.
Though these stereotypes are common, not all works adhere to them. Mark McLelland says that authors are "interested in exploring, not repudiating" the dynamics between the insertive partner and the receptive partner. The possibility of switching roles is often a source of playful teasing and sexual excitement for the characters, which has been said to show that the genre is aware of the "performative nature" of the roles. Sometimes the bottom character will be the aggressor in the relationship, or the pair will switch their sexual roles. Riba, リバ (a contraction of the English word "reversible") is used to describe a couple that yaoi fans think is still plausible when the partners switch their seme/uke roles. In another common mode of characters, the author will forego the stylisations of the seme and uke, and will portray both lovers as "equally attractive handsome men". In this case, whichever of the two who is ordinarily in charge will take the "passive role" in the bedroom.
Shōnen-ai
Shōnen-ai originally connoted ephebophiliaEphebophilia
Ephebophilia is the sexual preference of adults for mid-to-late adolescents, generally ages 15 to 19. The term was originally used in the late 19th to mid 20th century, and has been more recently revisited by Ray Blanchard. It is one of a number of sexual preferences across age groups subsumed...
or pederasty
Pederasty
Pederasty or paederasty is an intimate relationship between an adult and an adolescent boy outside his immediate family. The word pederasty derives from Greek "love of boys", a compound derived from "child, boy" and "lover".Historically, pederasty has existed as a variety of customs and...
in Japan, but from the early 1970s to the late 1980s, was used to describe a new genre of shōjo manga, primarily by the Year 24 Group
Year 24 group
refers to one of two female manga artist groups which are considered to have revolutionized shōjo manga . Their works often examine "radical and philosophical issues", including sexuality and gender issues, and many of their works are now considered "classics" of shōjo manga...
, about beautiful boys in love. Characteristics of shōnen-ai include that they were exotic, often taking place in Europe, and idealistic. Suzuki describes shōnen-ai as being "pedantic" and "difficult to understand", saying that they required "knowledge of classic literature, history and science" and were replete with "philosophical and abstract musings". She says that this challenged the young readers and expanded their minds. Although they could not understand the works at first reading, as they grew older they would come to understand the works more. In the meantime, "the readers' attention became focused on the figure of the male protagonist" and how he navigated his sexual relationships. By the late 1980s, the popularity of professionally published shōnen-ai was declining, and yaoi dōjinshi was becoming more popular. In recent years, the terms yaoi and shōnen-ai have sometimes been used by western fans to differentiate between the contents of the genre. Yaoi has been used to describe titles that contain largely sex scenes and other sexually explicit themes and shōnen-ai is used to describe titles that focus more on romance and do not include explicit sexual content, although they may include implicit sexual content.
Dōjinshi
The dōjinshiDojinshi
is the Japanese term for self-published works, usually magazines, manga or novels. Dōjinshi are often the work of amateurs, though some professional artists participate as a way to publish material outside the regular industry. The term dōjinshi is derived from and . Dōjinshi are part of a wider...
subculture has been considered the Japanese equivalent of the English-language slash fandom, especially as they both do not have typical "narrative structure", science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
works are particularly popular in both, and they both originated in the 1970s.
Typical yaoi dōjinshi
Dojinshi
is the Japanese term for self-published works, usually magazines, manga or novels. Dōjinshi are often the work of amateurs, though some professional artists participate as a way to publish material outside the regular industry. The term dōjinshi is derived from and . Dōjinshi are part of a wider...
features male-male pairings from non-romantic, published manga
Manga
Manga is the Japanese word for "comics" and consists of comics and print cartoons . In the West, the term "manga" has been appropriated to refer specifically to comics created in Japan, or by Japanese authors, in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 19th...
and anime
Anime
is the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....
. Much of the material derives from male-oriented (shōnen and seinen
Seinen
is a subset of manga that is generally targeted at a 20–30 year old male audience, but the audience can be older with some manga aimed at businessmen well into their 40s. In Japanese, the word Seinen means "young man" or "young men" and is not suggestive of sexual matters...
) works which contained male-male close friendships and are perceived by fans to imply homosexual attraction
Homoeroticism
Homoeroticism refers to the erotic attraction between members of the same sex, either male–male or female–female , most especially as it is depicted or manifested in the visual arts and literature. It can also be found in performative forms; from theatre to the theatricality of uniformed movements...
, such as with Captain Tsubasa
Captain Tsubasa
, also known as Flash Kicker, is a popular long running Japanese manga, animation, and video game series, originally created by Yōichi Takahashi in 1981...
and Saint Seiya
Saint Seiya
, also known as Saint Seiya: Knights of the Zodiac or simply Knights of the Zodiac, is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Masami Kurumada and serialized in Weekly Shōnen Jump from 1986 to 1991, and adapted into an anime TV series by Toei Animation from 1986 to 1989.The story follows...
, two titles which popularised yaoi in the 1980s. Saint Seiya
Saint Seiya
, also known as Saint Seiya: Knights of the Zodiac or simply Knights of the Zodiac, is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Masami Kurumada and serialized in Weekly Shōnen Jump from 1986 to 1991, and adapted into an anime TV series by Toei Animation from 1986 to 1989.The story follows...
was particularly popular as it had a large cast of characters, most of them male, which allowed "an incredible number" of pairings between characters, although Andromeda Shun
Andromeda Shun
, also known as Shun is a fictional character from the Saint Seiya universe created by Masami Kurumada as one of the main protagonists of the media franchise, which originated in the manga written and illustrated by Kurumada, later adapted to anime, and subsequently inspiring soundtracks, OVAs,...
was one of the more popular characters to parody in yaoi, as he was presented in the original series as "fragile and sensible, with fine traits, long hair, doe eyes and the most feminine armour of the group". For a time, yaoi dōjinshi was known as “Captain Tsubasa”. Dōjinshi has been described by Comiket
Comiket
, otherwise known as the , is the world's largest self-published comic book fair, held twice a year in Tokyo, Japan. The first Comiket was held on December 21, 1975, with only about 32 participating circles and an estimated 600 attendees. Attendance has since swelled to over a half million people....
's co-founder Yoshihiro Yonezawa
Yoshihiro Yonezawa
was a Japanese manga critic and author. He is also known for being Comiket's co-founder and president. He died of lung cancer at 53...
as being "girls playing with dolls"; yaoi fans may ship
Shipping (fandom)
Shipping, derived from the word relationship, is the belief that two fictional characters, typically from the same series, are in an intimate relationship, or have romantic feelings that could potentially lead to a relationship. It is considered a general term for fans' emotional involvement with...
any male-male pairing, sometimes pairing off a favourite character, or creating a story about two men and fitting existing characters into the story.
Matt Thorn notes that unlike in slash fandom, a canonical
Canon (fiction)
In the context of a work of fiction, the term canon denotes the material accepted as "official" in a fictional universe's fan base. It is often contrasted with, or used as the basis for, works of fan fiction, which are not considered canonical...
homoerotic element "takes away the fun" of creating yaoi for that series, for example, From Eroica with Love
From Eroica with Love
is a long-running shōjo manga by Yasuko Aoike which originally began publication in 1976 by Akita Shoten. The series ran irregularly in the Japanese anthology magazine Viva Princess from December 1976 to April 1979, then moved to the sister publication Princess beginning in September 1979...
is more popular with slash fans than it has been with dōjinshi artists. Kazuko Suzuki outlines the thematic development of the yaoi fandom, from curiosity about sexuality, to taking a parodic revenge against men, to a feminist protest, and lastly, exploring "ideal relationships".
Important characteristics of the early yaoi dōjinshi were that they were amateur publications not controlled by media restrictions, the stories were by teens for other teens and they were based on famous characters who were in their teens or early twenties, the same age as the yaoi fans. The rapid expansion of Comiket
Comiket
, otherwise known as the , is the world's largest self-published comic book fair, held twice a year in Tokyo, Japan. The first Comiket was held on December 21, 1975, with only about 32 participating circles and an estimated 600 attendees. Attendance has since swelled to over a half million people....
during the 1980s (less than 10,000 attendees in 1982-over 100,000 attendees in 1989) permitted many doujinshi authors to sell thousands of copies of their works, earning a fair amount of money. Mizoguchi points out that June paid a small honorarium
Honorarium
An honorarium is an ex gratia payment made to a person for their services in a volunteer capacity or for services for which fees are not traditionally required. This is used by groups such as schools or sporting clubs to pay coaches for their costs...
and only published stories which suited their less-explicit style, leading to some authors of yaoi choosing not to try to publish in June. During the early 1990s, dōjinshi played a part in popularising yaoi. Yaoi dōjinshi has been compared to the Plot, what Plot? subgenre of fan fiction
Fan fiction
Fan fiction is a broadly-defined term for fan labor regarding stories about characters or settings written by fans of the original work, rather than by the original creator...
.
Though collectors often focus on dōjinshi based on particular manga, any male character may become the subject of a yaoi dōjinshi, even characters from non-manga titles such as Harry Potter
Harry Potter
Harry Potter is a series of seven fantasy novels written by the British author J. K. Rowling. The books chronicle the adventures of the adolescent wizard Harry Potter and his best friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, all of whom are students at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry...
or The Lord of the Rings
The Lord of the Rings
The Lord of the Rings is a high fantasy epic written by English philologist and University of Oxford professor J. R. R. Tolkien. The story began as a sequel to Tolkien's earlier, less complex children's fantasy novel The Hobbit , but eventually developed into a much larger work. It was written in...
, or video games such as Kingdom Hearts
Kingdom Hearts
is an action role-playing game developed and published by Square in 2002 for the PlayStation 2 video game console. The first game in the Kingdom Hearts series, it is the result of a collaboration between Square Enix and The Walt Disney Company. The game combines characters and settings from Disney...
and Final Fantasy
Final Fantasy
is a media franchise created by Hironobu Sakaguchi, and is developed and owned by Square Enix . The franchise centers on a series of fantasy and science-fantasy role-playing video games , but includes motion pictures, anime, printed media, and other merchandise...
, real people such as politicians, or personifications
Moé anthropomorphism
is a form of anthropomorphism where moe qualities are given to non-human beings, objects, concepts, or phenomena. In addition to moe features, moe anthropomorphisms are also characterized by their accessories, which serve to emphasize their original forms before anthropomorphosis...
such as Hetalia: Axis Powers
Hetalia: Axis Powers
is a Japanese webcomic, later adapted as a manga and an anime series, by . The series presents an allegorical trivialisation of political and historic events, particularly of the World War II era, in which the various countries are represented by stereotyped anthropomorphic characters...
, or complementary items such as salt and pepper
Salt and Pepper
Salt and Pepper is a 1968 comedy film starring Sammy Davis, Jr., Peter Lawford, Michael Bates, Ilona Rodgers and John Le Mesurier. The film was directed by Richard Donner, who later would direct such blockbuster successes as Superman and Lethal Weapon.It spawned a 1970 sequel, One More Time,...
or peanut butter and jelly. Patrick W. Galbraith sums this up by saying "Among fujoshi, there seems no limit to the potential of transgressive intimacy imagined in yaoi relationships in pursuit of moe."
Most dōjinshi are created by amateurs who often work in "circles"; for example, the group CLAMP
Clamp (manga artists)
, is an all-female Japanese manga artist group that formed in the mid 1980s. Many of the group's manga series are often adapted into anime after release. It consists of their leader , who provides much of the storyline and screenplay for all their works and adaptations of those works respectively ,...
began as an amateur dōjinshi circle, drawing Saint Seiya yaoi. However, some professional artists, such as Kodaka Kazuma create dōjinshi as well. Some publishing companies have used dōjinshi published in the 1980s to spot talented amateurs, such as Biblos hiring Youka Nitta
Youka Nitta
is a Japanese yaoi manga artist. Although Nitta was already a fan of manga, she was introduced to yaoi manga when she was in grade five, by an older girl who was her neighbour. Her first manga story, "GROUPIE", was published by Biblos in 1997...
.
Convention when labelling stories differs between Japanese fandom and slash-influenced fandoms. In Japan, the labelling is to put the two names of the characters separated by a multiplication sign, with the seme being first, and the uke being second.
Global BL
As Japanese yaoi gained popularity in the U.S., a few American artists began creating original English-language mangaOriginal English-language manga
Original English-language manga or OEL manga is the term commonly used to describe comic books or graphic novels in the "international manga" genre of comics whose language of original publication is English...
for female readers featuring beautiful male-male couples, referred to as "American yaoi." The first known original English-language BL comic is Sexual Espionage #1 by Daria McGrain, published in May 2002. Since approximately 2004, what started as a small subculture in North America has become a burgeoning market, as new publishers began producing female-oriented male/male erotic comics and manga from creators outside Japan. Because creators from all parts of the globe are published in these "original English language" works, the term "American Yaoi" fell out of use; terms like 'Original English Language yaoi' shortened to 'Global Yaoi'. The term Global BL was coined by creators and newsgroups that wanted to distinguish the Asian specific content known as 'yaoi', from the original English content, and so the term Global BL was used. "Global BL" was shortened by comics author Tina Anderson in interviews and on her blog to the acronym 'GloBL'.
Current North American publishers of 'Global BL' are Yaoi Press
Yaoi press
Yaoi Press is an independent yaoi comic publisher based in Nevada. Founded in 2004 by publisher Yamila Abraham, the company specializes in Global BL, or yaoi comics originally published outside of Asia. Yaoi Press publishes original OEL manga as well as European yaoi in translation, and features...
, and publisher DramaQueen
DramaQueen
DramaQueen is a Houston based English-language publisher of domestic, Japanese, Korean, and Taiwanese comics founded in 2005. DramaQueen also publishes an original English-language yaoi anthology called Rush, which made its debut in 2006. RUSH ceased publishing when the company experienced...
, which debuted its 'Global BL' quarterly anthology RUSH in 2006. RUSH ceased publishing when the company experienced financial issues and were uncommunicative with the creators involved in the project. Dramaqueen began publishing again in 2010, and on their forums, CEO Tran Nguyen indicated RUSH would return in a new format in 2011.
Former publishers include Iris Print.
Prolific GloBL creators include Yayoi Neko, Dany & Dany, Tina Anderson
Tina Anderson
Tina Anderson is an American comic writer. She creates gay comics and women's yaoi, or Boys' Love. Anderson coined the term "GloBL" to encourage fans of yaoi/BL to think about implications of a BL aesthetic outside of Japanese culture...
, and Studio Kosen.
The most recent publishing boom in GloBL is happening in Germany, with a handful of original German titles gaining popularity for being set in Asia. Some publishers of German GloBL are traditional manga publishers like Carlsen Manga, and small press publishers specialising in GloBL like The Wild Side and Fireangels Verlag.
Publishing
Mizoguchi divides BL publication into two eras – the first era from the time of June to 2004, and a second era from 2004 onwards.The earliest magazine about Boy's Love was June
June (manga magazine)
was the earliest yaoi magazine, which began in 1978 as a response to the success of commercially published manga such as the works of female artists Keiko Takemiya, Moto Hagio and Yumiko Ōshima. Other factors that influenced the founding of June were the rising popularity of depictions of...
, which began in 1978 as a response to the success of commercially published manga such as the works of Keiko Takemiya
Keiko Takemiya
is a Japanese manga artist. She is included in the Year 24 Group. She resides in Kamukura, Kanagawa Prefecture. Takemiya was one of the female authors who in the early 1970s pioneered a genre of girls' comics about love between young men; in December 1970 she published a short story, "In the...
, Moto Hagio
Moto Hagio
is a manga artist born on May 12, 1949 in Ōmuta, Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan, though she currently lives in Saitama Prefecture. She is considered a "founding mother" of modern shōjo manga, especially shōnen-ai. She is also a member of the Year 24 Group...
and Yumiko Ōshima
Yumiko Oshima
is a female Japanese manga artist and a member of Year 24 group.She made her debut in 1968 with Paula's Tears in Weekly Margaret.She received the 1973 Japan Cartoonists Association Award for excellence for Mimoza Yashiki de Tsukamaete...
. Other factors was the rising popularity of depictions of bishōnen in the dōjinshi market and ambiguous musicians such as David Bowie
David Bowie
David Bowie is an English musician, actor, record producer and arranger. A major figure for over four decades in the world of popular music, Bowie is widely regarded as an innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s...
and Queen
Queen (band)
Queen are a British rock band formed in London in 1971, originally consisting of Freddie Mercury , Brian May , John Deacon , and Roger Taylor...
. June was meant to have an underground, "cultish, guerilla-style" feeling – most of its manga artists
Mangaka
is the Japanese word for a comic artist or cartoonist. Outside of Japan, manga usually refers to a Japanese comic book and mangaka refers to the author of the manga, who is usually Japanese...
were new talent. Frederik L. Schodt describes June as "a kind of 'readers' magazine, created by and for the readers." Essays about the characteristics of the June genre were published with the manga in June. In 1982, Shōsetsu June ("Novel June"), a sister magazine to June began publication. Its content is text-only stories with male romance. Nagaike believes that the true "revolution" in BL culture was when it began to be commercially published en masse in the 1990s. As of the mid-1990s, Shōsetsu June outsold June. As of 2008, June was still running, although the target audience's ages have widened and the style of stories has changed from being "soft love" to more overtly pornographic. The magazine (1980–1984) which was more text-based than June was influential in cultivating a lesbian culture
Sexuality and gender identity-based cultures
Sexuality and gender identity-based cultures are subcultures and communities composed of persons who have shared experiences, background, or interests due to a common sexual or gender identity. Among the first to argue that members of sexual minorities can constitute cultural minorities as well as...
.
The Japanese publisher Biblos was a BL publisher established in 1988 but their bankruptcy due to failure of their parent company caused them to fold in April 2006. Most of their titles were picked up by Libre. A 2006 breakdown of the Japanese commercial BL market estimated it grosses approximately 12 billion yen annually, with novel sales generating 250 million yen per month, manga generating 400 million yen per month, CDs generating 180 million yen per month, and video games generating 160 million yen per month. A 2010 report estimated that the Boys Love market was worth approximately 21.3 billion yen in both 2009 and 2010.
Japanese BL works are sold to English-speaking countries by companies that translate and print them in English; companies such as Digital Manga Publishing
Digital Manga Publishing
Digital Manga is a company that licenses and releases, in English, Japanese anime, manga, and related merchandise. The company has several subdivisions: Digital Manga Publishing, which publishes Japanese manga, novels and instructional and illustration books in North America with multiple imprints,...
with their imprints 801 Media (for explicit BL) and June (for "romantic and sweet" BL), as well as DramaQueen
DramaQueen
DramaQueen is a Houston based English-language publisher of domestic, Japanese, Korean, and Taiwanese comics founded in 2005. DramaQueen also publishes an original English-language yaoi anthology called Rush, which made its debut in 2006. RUSH ceased publishing when the company experienced...
, Kitty Media, Central Park Media
Central Park Media
Central Park Media was an American multimedia entertainment company based in New York City, New York, that was active in the distribution of East Asian cinema, television series, anime, manga and manhwa titles in North America prior to its bankruptcy in 2009...
's Be Beautiful, Tokyopop
Tokyopop
Tokyopop, styled TOKYOPOP, and formerly known as Mixx, is a distributor, licensor, and publisher of anime, manga, manhwa, and Western manga-style works. The existing German publishing division produces German translations of licensed Japanese properties and original English-language manga, as well...
under their imprint BLU, Broccoli
Broccoli (company)
is a Japanese media company that publishes manga, anime, and video games through its various subsidiaries.- About :Broccoli is the parent company of Broccoli Music Publishing, Broccoli International USA, and Anime Gamers USA Inc...
under their Boysenberry imprint, Aurora Publishing
Aurora Publishing
Aurora Publishing, Inc. is the American subsidiary of Japanese publisher Ohzora Publishing, the leading josei manga publisher in Japan. Headquartered in Torrance, California, it licensed and published Japanese manga for the North American market...
under their imprint Deux Press, and Yaoi Generation. The first publisher of BL in translation may be ComicsOne
ComicsOne
Comics One was an American distributor of Asian Comics , established in 1999. ComicsOne was based in Fremont, California...
, which released two volumes of shōnen-ai manga as e-books in January 2000. In 2001, the only BL-type manga available in print in English were the barely-suggestive Banana Fish
Banana Fish
Banana Fish is a classic shōjo manga by Akimi Yoshida which ran from 1985 to 1994 and spawned several mini-spin-offs: Private Opinion, Angel Eyes, X Men, and The Garden with Holy Light. The series was very popular in Japan....
and X/1999, and in 2002, commercially translated BL was "not common". According to McLelland, the earliest officially translated BL manga in print appeared in 2003, and as of 2006 there were about 130 English-translated works commercially available. In March 2007, Media Blasters
Media Blasters
Media Blasters is an entertainment corporation founded by John Sirabella and Sam Liebowitz, based in New York City. They are in the business of licensing, translating, and releasing to the North American market manga compilations and anime and live-action movies and television series to home-video...
stopped selling shōnen manga and increased their yaoi lines, anticipating to publish one or two titles per month that year. In 2007 following Biblos' bankruptcy, Libre published an open letter on their website which said that English-language publishers had to renegotiate publishing rights for Biblos' former series with Libre, specifically naming CPM's releases as "illegal". Diamond Comic Distributors
Diamond Comic Distributors
Diamond Comic Distributors, Inc. is the largest comic book distributor serving North America. They transport comic books from both big and small comic book publishers, or suppliers, to the retailers. Diamond dominates the direct market in the United States, and has exclusive arrangements with most...
estimated the U.S. sales of yaoi manga as being approximately $US 6 million in 2007. In English-speaking countries explicit stories are either sold online or displayed in shrink wrap
Shrink wrap
Shrink wrap, also shrinkwrap or shrink film, is a material made up of polymer plastic film. When heat is applied it shrinks tightly over whatever it is covering. Heat can be applied with a hand held heat gun or the product and film can pass through a heat tunnel on a conveyor.-Composition:The...
. Mark McLelland surveyed 135 yaoi books published in North America between 2003 and 2006, and found that 14% was rated at 13 years or over, 39% was rated for readers aged 15 years or over, and 47% was rated for readers 18 years or older. In 2008, BLU reported that although bookshops are becoming more willing to stock BL titles, they are conservative about how the books are labelled, leading to books being shrink wrapped and rated for over 18s which previously would have garnered an over 16 rating, and do not "really follow through on the [adult content] promise."
In 2010, Libre Publishing sent cease and desist letters to English language BL scanlation
Scanlation
Scanlation is the scanning, translation and editing of a graphic novel from a foreign language into a different language. Scanlation is done as an amateur work and is nearly always done without express permission from the copyright holder. The word scanlation is a portmanteau of scan and translation...
groups.
Tokyopop and its imprint BLU folded in May 2011. In October 2011, Viz Media
VIZ Media
VIZ Media, LLC, headquartered in San Francisco, is an anime, manga, and Japanese entertainment company. It was founded in 1986 as VIZ LLC. In 2005, VIZ LLC and ShoPro Entertainment merged to form the current VIZ Media LLC, which is jointly owned by Japanese publishers Shogakukan and Shueisha, and...
launched the BL imprint SuBLime in collaboration with the Japanese BL publisher Libre
Libre Publishing
Libre Publishing is a Japanese boys love manga publishing company. It was founded on May 8, 2006, and is the successor to Biblos , which folded due to the failure of its parent company....
and the Japanese retailer Animate
Animate
is the retailing arm of MOVIC and is the largest retailer of anime, games, and manga in Japan. The first and headquarters store of Animate opened in 1983 and is located in Ikebukuro, a district in Tokyo, Japan. Currently, there are 38 Animate stores in Japan, and two in Taipei, Taiwan...
to publish English-language BL for the print and worldwide digital market.
Thematic elements
BL has similar themes to heterosexual shōjo manga, several exploring adolescent romance and the "interiority of the characters." Nagaike identifies common narratives as being toshishita zeme, where the younger partner penetrates the older, shotaShotacon
, sometimes shortened to , is a Japanese slang portmanteau of the phrase and describes an attraction to young boys, or an individual with such an attraction. Outside Japan, the term is used less often with this meaning. It refers to a genre of manga and anime wherein pre-pubescent or pubescent...
mono about young adolescents, riiman mono, about salarymen, and gakuen mono, stories set on a campus. Common characters in yaoi are schoolboys and yakuza
Yakuza
, also known as , are members of traditional organized crime syndicates in Japan. The Japanese police, and media by request of the police, call them bōryokudan , literally "violence group", while the yakuza call themselves "ninkyō dantai" , "chivalrous organizations". The yakuza are notoriously...
. Sometimes, schoolboys are depicted in sexual situations, which is controversial when these titles are licensed in countries where underage sexuality and its depiction is taboo.
Female characters
Female characters often have very minor roles in yaoi, or are absent altogether. Suzuki notes that mothers, in particular, are portrayed badly, such as Takuto's mother from Zetsuai 1989Zetsuai 1989
is a Japanese yaoi manga known for its melo-dramatic, almost operatic plot, its "semi-insane characters", and for the controversial style of its artwork. The word "Zetsu-ai" is a compound created by Minami Ozaki which has been translated as "desperate love". Ozaki's preferred English translation is...
, who killed her husband in front of her young son. Suzuki suggests this is because the character and the reader are attempting to replace a mother's lacking "unconditional love" with the "forbidden" all-consuming love presented in yaoi. Nariko Enomoto
Nariko Enomoto
Nariko Enomoto 榎本ナリコ is a manga author and manga critic who uses this name for children's and women's magazines. She writes under the name for Boys Love and doujinshi, and for critical works. She made her professional debut in 1997 with , published by Shogakukan. She won a special award in the...
, a yaoi author, says she feels that when women are shown, "it can't help but become weirdly real". When yaoi fan works are created from a series which originally contained females (such as Gundam Wing), the female's role is either minimised or the character is killed off. Early shōnen-ai and yaoi has been regarded as misogynistic, but Lunsing detects a decrease in misogynistic comments from characters and regards the development of the yuri genre as reflecting a reduction of internal misogyny. Alternatively, the yaoi fandom is also viewed as a "refuge" from mainstream culture, which in this paradigm is viewed as inherently misogynistic. Fumi Yoshinaga
Fumi Yoshinaga
is a Japanese manga artist known for her shōjo and shōnen-ai works.-Personal:Fumi Yoshinaga was born in Tokyo, Japan in 1971. She attended the prestigious Keio University in Tokyo....
is regarded as a creator who usually includes at least one sympathetic female character in her works. Also, there are many female characters in Yaoi who are Fujoshi
Fujoshi
Yaoi fandom refers to readers of yaoi , a genre of male-male romance narratives aimed at a female audience, and more specifically those who participate in communal activities organized around yaoi, such as attending conventions, maintaining or posting to fansites, creating fanfiction or fanart,...
themselves.
Gachi muchi
Recently, a subgenre of BL has been introduced in Japan, so-called "muscley-chubby BL" or gachi muchi (from and )which offers more masculine body types and is more likely to have gay male authors and artists. Although still marketed primarily to women, it is also thought to attract a large crossover gay male audience. Although this type of material has also been referred to as "bara" among English-speaking fans, it is not equivalent to gei comi proper (although there is considerable overlap, as writers, artists and art styles cross over between the two genres). Prior to the development of gachi muchi, the greatest overlap between yaoi and bara authors has been in BDSM
BDSM
BDSM is an erotic preference and a form of sexual expression involving the consensual use of restraint, intense sensory stimulation, and fantasy power role-play. The compound acronym BDSM is derived from the terms bondage and discipline , dominance and submission , and sadism and masochism...
-themed publications such as Zettai Reido, a yaoi anthology magazine which had a number of openly male contributors. Several female yaoi authors who have done BDSM-themed yaoi have been recruited to contribute stories to BDSM-themed bara anthologies or special issues.
Gay rights
Many BL manga have fantasticFantastic
The Fantastic is a literary term that describes a quality of other literary genres, and, in some cases, is used as a genre in and of itself, although in this case it is often conflated with the Supernatural. The term was originated in the structuralist theory of critic Tzvetan Todorov in his work...
, historic or futuristic settings, and many fans consider BL to be an "escapist fantasy". Homophobia
Homophobia
Homophobia is a term used to refer to a range of negative attitudes and feelings towards lesbian, gay and in some cases bisexual, transgender people and behavior, although these are usually covered under other terms such as biphobia and transphobia. Definitions refer to irrational fear, with the...
, when it is presented as an issue at all, is used as a plot device
Plot device
A plot device is an object or character in a story whose sole purpose is to advance the plot of the story, or alternatively to overcome some difficulty in the plot....
to "heighten the drama", or to show the purity of the leads’ love. Matt Thorn has suggested that as BL is a romance narrative, having strong political themes may be a "turn off" to the readers. Yaoi narratives show characters "overcoming obstacles, often internal, to be together". The theme of the victory of the protagonists in yaoi has been compared favourably to Western fairy tale
Fairy tale
A fairy tale is a type of short story that typically features such folkloric characters, such as fairies, goblins, elves, trolls, dwarves, giants or gnomes, and usually magic or enchantments. However, only a small number of the stories refer to fairies...
s, as the latter intends to enforce the status quo
Status quo
Statu quo, a commonly used form of the original Latin "statu quo" – literally "the state in which" – is a Latin term meaning the current or existing state of affairs. To maintain the status quo is to keep the things the way they presently are...
, but yaoi is "about desire" and seeks "to explore, not circumscribe, possibilities." Hisako Miyoshi, vice editor-in-chief for Libre Publishing
Libre Publishing
Libre Publishing is a Japanese boys love manga publishing company. It was founded on May 8, 2006, and is the successor to Biblos , which folded due to the failure of its parent company....
, has said that she feels that boys love manga has become less realist, with more comedic elements or being "simply for entertainment". She thinks that earlier BL focused "more on the homosexual way of life with a realist perspective." Makoto Tateno
Makoto Tateno
, who also uses the penname Shinjuku Tango, is a Japanese manga artist who made her debut in 1986. Tateno regards her influences as being Go Nagai and Osamu Tezuka. Two of her best known works are Yellow and Happy Boys...
has said that she feels that BL with a focus on realistic gay issues "won't become a trend, because girls like fiction more than realism." Akiko Mizoguchi feels that while depictions of homosexuality as "shameful" to heighten dramatic tension are still shown, BL is including more coming out
Coming out
Coming out is a figure of speech for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people's disclosure of their sexual orientation and/or gender identity....
stories which portray a gradual acceptance from the wider community. Mizoguchi feels that BL is showing far more gay-friendly depictions of Japanese society, which she regards as activism.
Idealism
Most BL manga have been said to "foster an aesthetic of purity, even when depicting hard-core sex acts." Sandra Buckley felt that the characters have equality in their relationships, which were "free of domination and exploitation". Yaoi stories are often strongly homosocialHomosocial
In sociology, homosociality describes same-sex relationships that are not of a romantic or sexual nature, such as friendship, mentorship, or others. The opposite of homosocial is heterosocial, preferring non-sexual relations with the opposite sex...
, which gives the men freedom to bond with each other and to pursue shared goals together, as in dojinshi
Dojinshi
is the Japanese term for self-published works, usually magazines, manga or novels. Dōjinshi are often the work of amateurs, though some professional artists participate as a way to publish material outside the regular industry. The term dōjinshi is derived from and . Dōjinshi are part of a wider...
representations of Captain Tsubasa, or to rival each other, as in Haru wo Daiteita
Haru wo Daiteita
is a yaoi manga by Youka Nitta, about two male pornographic actors who fall in love as they attempt to break into mainstream acting. It is published in English by Be Beautiful Manga. In addition to the manga, a drama CD and OVA have been released...
. This spiritual bond and equal partnership shown overcomes the male-female power hierarchy.
Rape
According to Suzuki, sexual intercourseSexual intercourse
Sexual intercourse, also known as copulation or coitus, commonly refers to the act in which a male's penis enters a female's vagina for the purposes of sexual pleasure or reproduction. The entities may be of opposite sexes, or they may be hermaphroditic, as is the case with snails...
in yaoi is a way of expressing commitment to a partner, and "apparent violence" in sex is a "measure of passion". Suzuki elaborates that when a woman is raped, she is stigmatised by society, but in yaoi narratives, boys who are loved by their rapists are still "imbued with innocence", a theme she attributes to Kaze to Ki no Uta
Kaze to Ki no Uta
is a shōjo manga with yaoi themes by Keiko Takemiya. It was first published by Shougakukan from 1976 to 1984 in the magazine Shōjo Comic. In 1979, it was awarded the prestigious Shogakukan Manga Award for shōnen/shōjo manga. The series is widely regarded as a shōnen-ai manga classic, being one of...
. According to Nagaike, rape scenes in yaoi are rarely presented as crime
Crime
Crime is the breach of rules or laws for which some governing authority can ultimately prescribe a conviction...
s with an assaulter and a victim. Nagaike feels that scenes where a seme rapes an uke are not symptomatic of the seme's "disruptive sexual/violent desires", but instead are a signifier of the "uncontrollable love" felt by a seme for an uke. Instead of being depicted as a crime, rape scenes can be a plot device
Plot device
A plot device is an object or character in a story whose sole purpose is to advance the plot of the story, or alternatively to overcome some difficulty in the plot....
used to make the uke see the seme as more than just a good friend, resulting in the uke falling in love with the seme. Rape fantasy
Rape fantasy
A rape fantasy or a ravishment is a sexual fantasy involving imagining or pretending being coerced or coercing another into sexual activity. In sexual role-play it involves acting out roles of coercive sex...
themes have been said to free the protagonist of responsibility in sex, leading to the narrative climax
Climax (narrative)
The Climax is the point in the story where the main character's point of view changes, or the most exciting/action filled part of the story. It also known has the main turning point in the story...
of the story, where "the protagonist takes responsibility for his own sexuality". The 2003-2005 Under Grand Hotel
Under Grand Hotel
is a yaoi manga by Mika Sadahiro about two prisoners, Sen and Swordfish, who try to survive the notorious prison "Under Grand Hotel". It is published by 801 Media in English, although at one point, Tokyopop offered a license.-Reception:...
, set in a men's prison, has been praised for showing a more realistic depiction of rape.
Tragedy
June stories with suicide endings were popular, as was "watching men suffer". Matt Thorn theorises that depicting abuse in yaoi is a coping mechanism for some yaoi fans. By the mid 1990s the fashion was for happy endingHappy ending
A happy ending is an ending of the plot of a work of fiction in which almost everything turns out for the best for the protagonists, their sidekicks, and almost everyone except the villains....
s. When tragic endings are shown, the cause is not infidelity, but "the cruel and intrusive demands of an uncompromising outside world."
Critical attention
Boys' Love manga has received considerable critical attention, especially after translations of BL became commercially available outside of Japan in the 21st century. Different critics and commentators have had very different views of BL. In 1983, Frederik L. SchodtFrederik L. Schodt
Frederik L. Schodt is an American translator, interpreter and writer.Schodt's father was in the US foreign service, and he grew up in Norway, Australia, and Japan. The family first went to Japan in 1965 when Schodt was fifteen. They left in 1967 but Schodt remained to graduate from Tokyo's American...
observed that “aesthetically” depicted male-male homosexual relationships had become popular among female readers as an extension of bisexual themes already present in shōjo manga. Japanese critics have seen BL as allowing girls to distance sex from their own bodies, as allowing girls to avoid adult female sexuality
Human female sexuality
Human female sexuality encompasses a broad range of behaviors and processes, including female sexual identity and sexual behavior, the physiological, psychological, social, cultural, political, and spiritual or religious aspects of sex...
while simultaneously creating greater fluidity in perceptions of gender and sexuality, and as rejecting “socially mandated” gender role
Gender role
Gender roles refer to the set of social and behavioral norms that are considered to be socially appropriate for individuals of a specific sex in the context of a specific culture, which differ widely between cultures and over time...
s as a “first step toward feminism
Feminism
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...
.” In more elaborate theorizing, Kazuko Suzuki sees BL manga emerging from girls' contempt and dislike for masculine heterosexism
Heterosexism
Heterosexism is a system of attitudes, bias, and discrimination in favor of opposite-sex sexuality and relationships. It can include the presumption that everyone is heterosexual or that opposite-sex attractions and relationships are the only norm and therefore superior...
and from an effort to define "ideal relationships" among men. Mizoguchi, writing in 2003, feels that BL is a "female-gendered space", as the writers, readers, artists and most of the editors of BL are female. BL has been compared to romance novels by English-speaking librarians. Parallels have also been noted in the popularity of lesbianism in pornography, and yaoi has been called a form of "female fetishism
Sexual fetishism
Sexual fetishism, or erotic fetishism, is the sexual arousal a person receives from a physical object, or from a specific situation. The object or situation of interest is called the fetish, the person a fetishist who has a fetish for that object/situation. Sexual fetishism may be regarded, e.g...
". Mariko Ōhara
Mariko Ohara
is a Japanese science fiction writer. In her teens, she wrote Kirk/Spock fan fiction. She graduated from Seisin University and her writing career began in 1980....
, a science fiction writer, has said that she wrote yaoi Kirk/Spock
Kirk/Spock
Kirk/Spock, also commonly referred to as "K/S" and referring to James T. Kirk and Spock from Star Trek, is a pairing popular in slash fiction, possibly the first slash pairing according to Henry Jenkins. Early on, a few fan writers started speculating about the possibility of a sexual relationship...
fiction as a teen because she could not enjoy "conventional pornography, which had been made for men", and that she had found a "limitless freedom" in yaoi, much like in science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
.
Other commentators have suggested that more radical gender-political issues underlie BL. Shihomi Sakakibara (1998) argued that yaoi fans, including herself, were homosexually oriented female-to-male transsexuals. For Sandra Buckley, bishōnen narratives champion “the imagined potentialities of alternative [gender] differentiations" and James Welker described the bishōnen character as "queer
Queer
Queer is an umbrella term for sexual minorities that are not heterosexual, heteronormative, or gender-binary. In the context of Western identity politics the term also acts as a label setting queer-identifying people apart from discourse, ideologies, and lifestyles that typify mainstream LGBT ...
", observing that manga critic Akiko Mizoguchi saw shōnen-ai as playing a role in how she herself had become a lesbian. Dru Pagliassotti sees this and the yaoi ronsō as indicating that for Japanese gay and lesbian readers, BL is not as far removed from reality as heterosexual female readers like to claim. Welker added that shōnen-ai liberates readers "not just from patriarchy, but from gender dualism
Dualism
Dualism denotes a state of two parts. The term 'dualism' was originally coined to denote co-eternal binary opposition, a meaning that is preserved in metaphysical and philosophical duality discourse but has been diluted in general or common usages. Dualism can refer to moral dualism, Dualism (from...
and heteronormativity."
Some gay and lesbian commentators have criticized how gay identity is portrayed in BL, most notably in the yaoi ronsō or "yaoi debate" of 1992–1997. In May 1992, gay activist Masaki Satō criticized yaoi fans and artists in an open letter
Open letter
An open letter is a letter that is intended to be read by a wide audience, or a letter intended for an individual, but that is nonetheless widely distributed intentionally....
to the feminist zine
Zine
A zine is most commonly a small circulation publication of original or appropriated texts and images. More broadly, the term encompasses any self-published work of minority interest usually reproduced via photocopier....
(or minikomi in Japanese) Choisir. Satō said that yaoi failed to provide accurate information about gay men, promoted a destructive image of gay men as wealthy, handsome, and well-educated, ignored prejudice and discrimination against gay men in society, and co-opted gay men as masturbation fantasies. An extensive debate ensued, with yaoi fans and artists arguing that yaoi is entertainment for women, not education for gay men, and that yaoi characters are not meant to represent "real gay men." As internet resources for gay men developed in the 1990s, the yaoi debate waned but has had later echoes, for example when Mizoguchi in 2003 characterised stereotypes in modern BL as being "unrealistic and homophobic". There has been similar criticism to the Japanese yaoi debate in the English-speaking fandom. In 1993 and 2004, Matt Thorn
Matt Thorn
Matt Thorn is a cultural anthropologist and an Associate Professor in the Department of Manga Production at Kyoto Seika University's Faculty of Manga in Japan. He is most well known in North America for his work dealing with shōjo manga. He has appeared at multiple anime conventions, including...
pointed to the complexity of these phenomena, and suggested that yaoi and slash fiction
Slash fiction
Slash fiction is a genre of fan fiction that focuses on the depiction of romantic or sexual relationships between fictional characters of the same sex...
fans are discontented with “the standards of femininity to which they are expected to adhere and a social environment
Social environment
The social environment of an individual, also called social context or milieu, is the culture that s/he was educated or lives in, and the people and institutions with whom the person interacts....
that does not validate or sympathize with that discontent.”
As women have greater economic power, commercial demand for the sexualization of men may correlate. Korean manhwa
Manhwa
Manhwa is the general Korean term for comics and print cartoons . Outside of Korea, the term usually refers specifically to South Korean comics. The term, along with manga, is a cognate of the Chinese manhua...
writer Jin Seok Jeon wrote in a commentary to Vol. 5, Chp 2 of an Arabian Nights themed shōnen-ai work, A Night of a Thousand Dreams, "Men are now marketable. It's also a time where women are big consumers and can buy almost anything they desire. Some men think this is degrading...but the tables have turned, and I like the fact that men are just as commercialized now." He jokes that after researching oil wrestling
Oil wrestling
Oil wrestling , also called grease wrestling, is the Turkish national sport. It is so called because the wrestlers douse themselves with olive oil. It is related to the Uzbeki kurash, Tuvan khuresh and Tatar köräş...
, which requires extreme physical fitness, he does not feel as marketable, illustrating that yaoi and other pornography exploiting men is subject to traditional criticisms, such as sexual objectification
Sexual objectification
Sexual objectification refers to the practice of regarding or treating another person merely as an instrument towards one's sexual pleasure, and a sex object is a person who is regarded simply as an object of sexual gratification or who is sexually attractive...
, creating unrealistic expectations and negative body image
Body image
Body image refers to a person's perception of the aesthetics and sexual attractiveness of their own body. The phrase body image was first coined by the Austrian neurologist and psychoanalyst Paul Schilder in his masterpiece The Image and Appearance of the Human Body...
s.
In China, BL became very popular in the late 1990s, attracting media attention, which became negative, focusing on the challenge it posed to "heterosexual hegemony". Publishing and distributing BL is illegal in mainland China. Zanghellini notes that due to the "characteristics of the yaoi/BL genre" of showing characters who are often underage engaging in romantic and sexual situations, child pornography laws in Australia
Child pornography laws in Australia
Child pornography laws in Australia state that all sexualised depictions of children under the age of 18 are illegal and it has banned photographs of women with an A breast cup size even in their late 20s as "encouraging pedophilia", leading to a marked increase in the breast size of women...
and Canada
Child pornography laws in Canada
Child pornography laws in Canada forbid the production, distribution, and possession of child pornography.-Visual representations:Prohibition covers the visual representations of sexual activity by persons under the age of 18 years and the depiction of their sexual organ/anal region for a sexual...
"may lend themselves to targeting yaoi/BL work". He notes that in the UK
Child pornography laws in the United Kingdom
'Child pornography in the United Kingdom is covered by the Protection of Children Act 1978, which makes it illegal to take, make, distribute, show or possess an indecent photograph or pseudo-photograph of someone under the age of 18...
, cartoons are exempt from child pornography laws unless they are used for child grooming
Child grooming
Child grooming refers to actions deliberately undertaken with the aim of befriending and establishing an emotional connection with a child, in order to lower the child's inhibitions in preparation for sexual activity with the child, or exploitation .Child grooming may be used to lure minors into...
.
In 2001, a controversy erupted in Thailand
Thailand
Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...
regarding homosexual male comics. Television reports labeled the comics as negative influences, while a newspaper falsely stated that most of the comics were not copyrighted as the publishers feared arrest for posting the content; in reality most of the titles were likely illegally published without permission from the original Japanese publishers. The shōnen ai comics provided profits for the comic shops, which sold between 30 to 50 such comics per day. The moral panic regarding the male homosexual comics subsided. The Thai girls felt too embarrassed to read heterosexual stories, so they read homosexual male-themed josei and shōjo stories, which they saw as "unthreatening."
Youka Nitta has said that "even in Japan, reading boys' love isn't something that parents encourage" and encouraged any parents who had concerns about her works to read them. Although in Japan, concern about manga has been mostly directed to shōnen manga, in 2006, an email campaign was launched against the availability of BL manga in Sakai City's public library. In August 2008, the library decided to stop buying more BL, and to keep its existing BL in a collection restricted to adult readers. That November, the library was contacted by people who protested against the removal, regarding it as "a form of sexual discrimination". The Japanese media ran stories on how much BL was in public libraries, and emphasised that this sexual material had been loaned out to minors. Debate ensued on Mixi
Mixi
mixi, Inc. is one of several social networking websites in Japan, founded in 2004. As of May 2008, mixi had over 21.6 million users and an 80% share of the social networking market in Japan...
, a Japanese social networking site, and eventually the library returned its BL to the public collection. Mark McLelland suggests that BL may become "a major battlefront for proponents and detractors of 'gender free
Gender equality
Gender equality is the goal of the equality of the genders, stemming from a belief in the injustice of myriad forms of gender inequality.- Concept :...
' policies in employment, education and elsewhere."
See also
- :Category:Shōnen-ai – a list of shōnen-ai works
- :Category:Yaoi – a list of yaoi works
- BL gameBL gameBoys' Love games usually refers to otome games or H games oriented around male homosexual couples for the female market. The defining factor is that both the playable character and possible objects of affection are male...
- Glossary of anime and manga
- Girlfag and guydyke
- List of manga magazines – includes BL magazines
- Men who have sex with menMen who have sex with menMen who have sex with men are male persons who engage in sexual activity with members of the same sex, regardless of how they identify themselves; many men choose not to accept sexual identities of homosexual or bisexual...
- Pornography in JapanPornography in JapanPornography in Japan.-Before the 20th century:Shunga or pornographic wood-block pictures were printed with all imaginable situations. These often took the form of a book with sentences to describe verbal utterances of the partners, as well as to offer brief descriptions of a scene...
Further reading
- Aoyama, Tomoko (1988) "Male homosexuality as treated by Japanese women writers" in The Japanese Trajectory: Modernization and Beyond, Gavan McCormackGavan McCormackGavan McCormack is a researcher specialising in East Asia who is currently Emeritus Professor and Visiting Fellow, Division of Pacific and Asian History of the Australian National University...
, Yoshio Sugimoto eds. Cambridge University PressCambridge University PressCambridge University Press is the publishing business of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by Henry VIII in 1534, it is the world's oldest publishing house, and the second largest university press in the world...
, ISBN 0-521-34515-4. - Butcher, Christopher (11 December 2007). "Queer love manga style". Xtra!Xtra!Xtra! is a gay magazine, on newsprint in tabloid format, published by Pink Triangle Press in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.-History and content :...
. - Cooper, Lisa "Laugh it up" Newtype USA, October 2007 (Volume 6 Number 10)
- Fujimoto Yukari (2004). "Transgender: Female Hermaphrodites and Male Androgynes". U.S.-Japan Women’s Journal 27: 76.
- van de Goor, Sophie (2010) Slashing Japan: the self-depathology of the female fan
- Haggerty, George E. (2000). Encyclopedia of Gay Histories and Cultures. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-0-8153-1880-4.
- Kakinuma Eiko, Kurihara Chiyo et al. (eds.), Tanbi-Shosetsu, Gay-Bungaku Book Guide, 1993. ISBN 4-89367-323-8
- KUCIKUCIKUCI is a college radio station broadcasting a Variety format. Licensed to Irvine, California, USA, the station serves the Orange County area...
Subversities 18 October 2010 - Lees, Sharon (July 2006). "Be Beautiful: Yaoi Publishers Interviews Part 3". Akiba Angels.
- Levi, Antonia (1996) Samurai from Outer Space: Understanding Japanese AnimationSamurai from Outer Space: Understanding Japanese AnimationSamurai from Outer Space: Understanding Japanese Animation is a 1998 book written by Antonia Levi. The book was published in North America by Open Court Publishing Company on December 30, 1998.-Reception:...
- Lewis, Marilyn JayeMarilyn Jaye LewisMarilyn Jaye Lewis is an American writer and editor of erotic short stories and novels.-Early career as a singer-songwriter:Lewis studied recording and audio engineering in New York City, after moving there from her home town of Columbus, Ohio in 1980...
(editor), Zowie! It's Yaoi!: Western Girls Write Hot Stories of Boys' Love. Philadelphia: Running Press, 2006. ISBN 1-56025-910-8. - Mautner, Chris (2007) "Introduction to yaoi, part 1"
- McCarthy, Helen, Jonathan ClementsJonathan ClementsJonathan Clements is a British author and scriptwriter. His non-fiction works include biographies of Confucius, Koxinga and Qin Shihuangdi , as well as monthly opinion columns for Neo magazine...
The Erotic Anime Movie Guide pub Titan (London) 1998 ISBN 1852869461 - McHarry, Mark (2011). "Girls Doing Boys Doing Boys: Boys' Love, Masculinity and Sexual Identities." In Perper, Timothy and Martha Cornog (Eds.) Mangatopia: Essays on Anime and Manga in the Modern World. New York: ABC-Clio. ISBN 9781591589082
- Nishimura Mari (2001) Aniparo to Yaoi Ohta Publishing ISBN 978-4-87233-643-6
- Newtype USA, August 2007 (Volume 6 Number 8) "Why we like it"
- Newtype USA, November 2007 (Vol. 6 No. 11) "Favorite authors" p. 109
- Ogi, Fusami (Autumn 2001) "Beyond Shoujo, Blending Gender: Subverting the Homogendered World in Shoujo Manga (Japanese Comics for Girls)." International Journal of Comic ArtInternational Journal of Comic ArtThe International Journal of Comic Art is a peer-reviewed journal about comic art, published twice a year. It was established in 1999 by John Lent , who is also the editor in chief. The journal is independently published and does not maintain an online edition, although tables of contents are...
3 (2): 151-161. - PiQ, June 2008 (Volume 1 Number 3)
- PiQPiQPiQ was a short-lived American popular culture magazine that was published by PiQ, LLC, a subsidiary of A.D. Vision, from March through July 2008...
, July 2008 (Volume 1 Number 4) - Saito, Kumiko (2011) "Desire in Subtext: Gender, Fandom, and Women’s Male-Male Homoerotic Parodies in Contemporary Japan" in MechademiaMechademia-Reception:Steve Raiteri from Library Journal commends Mechademia as a "great first effort [...] bridg[ing] the gap between academics and fans." Christophe Thouny, writing for Animation also thought the writing and tone was accessible by both academics and fans...
6. - Salek, Rebecca (June 2005) More Than Just Mommy and Daddy: "Nontraditional" Families in Comics Sequential Tart
- Solomon, Charles (30 June 2004) Young men in love Los Angeles TimesLos Angeles TimesThe Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
- Thompson, JasonJason Thompson (writer)Jason Thompson is a manga critic, journalist, writer and comics artist.-Life and career:...
(31 July 2006) Boku no Shonen Ai (or "Jason overanalyzes something and takes all the fun out of it") livejournal.com archive - Welker, James. (2011) "Flower Tribes and Female Desire: Complicating Early Female Consumption of Male Homosexuality in Shôjo Manga" in MechademiaMechademia-Reception:Steve Raiteri from Library Journal commends Mechademia as a "great first effort [...] bridg[ing] the gap between academics and fans." Christophe Thouny, writing for Animation also thought the writing and tone was accessible by both academics and fans...
6.